When producing cylinder blocks for water-cooled reciprocating engines, there is an increasing tendency to cast the cylinders together as close as possible in order to realize a short structural shape of the cylinder block. This close arrangement of cylinders leads to web areas with a thickness of less than 9 mm, and in particular less than 8.5 mm in the finished state. The cooling of such cylinder blocks has been effected up to now by aid of a water jacket surrounding the cylinder walls on both longitudinal sides and the two front sides of the cylinder block.
The inventor has now recognized that the danger of knocking in such reciprocating engines and problems with regard to the cylinder packing of such cylinder blocks are due, in particular in the case of highly loaded engines, to thermal problems resulting from insufficient cooling of the narrow web areas between extremely closely arranged cylinders. Due to the very small web thicknesses, however, it is very problematic to provide appropriate cooling means for the web area.
The invention is based on the problem of providing an apparatus making it possible to realize in a simple and reliable manner a cooling means for webs of very closely adjacent cylinders of a cylinder block.